AB1229 - Adult Reentry Grant Program.

Amended IN Senate August 29, 2025 Amended IN Senate July 02, 2025 CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2025–2026 REGULAR SESSION Assembly Bill No. 1229 Introduced by Assembly Members Schultz and Quirk-Silva (Principal coauthors: Assembly Members Ávila Farías, Caloza, Mark González, Haney, Kalra, and Lee) February 21, 2025 An act to add Chapter 2.6 (commencing with Section 50480) to Part 2 of Division 31 of the Health and Safety Code, and to add Section 5036 to the Penal Code, relating to housing. LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST AB 1229, as amended, Schultz. Adult Reentry Grant Program. The Budget Act of 2018 appropriated $50,000,000 to the Board of State and Community Corrections for a grant program, known as the Adult Reentry Grant Program, for the purpose of awarding competitive grants to community based organizations to support offenders formerly incarcerated in state prison. The Budget Act of 2018 allocated a specified amount of those funds for, among other things, rental assistance, rehabilitation of existing property or buildings, and to support the warm hand-off and reentry of offenders transitioning from prison to communities. Subsequent budget acts have continued to fund the program. This bill, instead, commencing July 1, 2026, and upon appropriation of funds, would transfer the administration of the grant program to the Department of Housing and Community Development. The bill would require the department, on or before December 1, 2026, to modify the grant program to provide 5-year renewable grants to geographically diverse regional administrators responsible for funding permanent supportive housing and reentry services for eligible people, as specified. The bill would require the department to issue proposed guidelines or a draft notice, as specified, establishing the grant program and require the department to competitively score applicants applying for grant funds as regional administrators. The bill would require the department to work collaboratively with the State Department of Health Care Services, Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and homeless continuums of care, and seek to work collaboratively with county probation departments, to establish a process for referrals of people eligible to participate in the program, as specified. The bill would also require the department to establish specified benchmarks to promote and track ideal outcomes from the program. This bill would require the department to distribute program funds by executing contracts with awarded regional administrators and would impose certain requirements on those regional administrators. The bill would prescribe eligibility requirements for a person scheduled for release from, or who has been be formerly incarcerated in, state prison, to participate in the program. The bill would require program funds to be used for specified purposes, including specified administrative fees, permanent housing, rental and operating subsidies, incentives to landlords, and voluntary multidisciplinary services, as specified. The bill would require the department, upon implementation of the program, to design an evaluation and hire an independent evaluator to assess outcomes from the program, and would require the evaluation to be submitted to specified committees of the Legislature. This bill would require the board to continue to oversee and administer existing program grants that have not yet expired, using resources allocated to the board through funds allocated by the Budget Act of 2025. This bill would require the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to establish a process to engage an individual scheduled for discharge, within at least 210 days of the scheduled release date, for the purpose of assessing the individual’s risk of homelessness upon discharge, as specified. Digest Key Vote: MAJORITY Appropriation: NO Fiscal Committee: YES Local Program: NO Bill Text The people of the State of California do enact as follows: SECTION 1. The Legislature finds and declares all of the following: (a) Fifteen percent of Californians on parole are unhoused and nearly all are unsheltered. The rate of individuals on parole who suffer from homelessness is over 17 times higher than the rate of homelessness among all Californians. Thirty percent of firefighters battling wildfires in California are people serving time in prison who are within one year of reentering their communities, and who are at great risk of homelessness. (b) People on parole are seven times more likely to recidivate when unhoused than when housed. (c) Evidence shows supportive housing, or housing that is affordable to people living in extreme poverty that does not limit the length of stay and offers tenant services promoting housing stability, reduces recidivism and improves the tenant’s ability to recover from health conditions. (d) In 2018, the Legislature passed, and the Governor signed, Senate Bill 840 of the 2017–18 Regular Session, which was known as the Budget Act of 2018. The Budget Act included funding to the Board of State and Community Corrections for local assistance to award competitive grant funds to community-based organizations to support people who were formerly incarcerated in prison through rental subsidies, rehabilitation of existing housing, and the warm hand-off of people transitioning from prison to communities. The funding was primarily intended for, and directed to, housing resources. This funding became known as the Adult Reentry Grant Program and currently receives ongoing funding. (e) Transformation of the Medi-Cal program and the state’s behavioral health system will increase justice-involved access to support services upon exiting prison, if people are able to access these services. The Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, under the umbrella of the California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM) initiative, for instance, offers people exiting prison the services they need prior to their release to reenter communities successfully. CalAIM’s community supports offers people supportive services they need to access housing and remain stably housed. CalAIM’s Enhanced Care Management benefit offers linkage to health care providers and other community services people may need to access health and housing stability. These transformations offer opportunities to braid housing resources from the Adult Reentry Grant Program with existing health programs to further improve the housing, health, and reentry outcomes of participants, and to bring more resources to formerly incarcerated people trying to reintegrate into their communities. Braiding these resources will also allow the state to boost housing stability and reduce recidivism among people exiting prison or on parole. (f) It is the intent of the Legislature to connect the Adult Reentry Grant Program’s housing resources with existing health resources toward reducing substantially the number of Californians experiencing homelessness upon exit from prison. Through funding evidence-based models of housing and services that allow parolees to obtain and maintain housing stability during and after their term of parole, the state would allow people with a history of prison incarceration to exit or avoid homelessness for good, thereby reducing recidivism. (g) The Department of Housing and Community Development, with its expertise in overseeing grant programs for housing and services, is the appropriate entity to administer programs offering evidence-based housing and services interventions to people with a history of incarceration in prison experiencing or at risk of homelessness. (h) Other states and local communities have created programs that fund rental subsidies with services for people reentering the community from incarceration. These programs successfully promote health, housing, and employment stability and dramatically reduce recidivism among participants. Whereas California’s recidivism rate during the last year tracked is almost 42 percent, recidivism rates among participants of the Returning Home Ohio program, for example, have recidivism rates of 5 percent SEC. 2. Chapter 2.6 (commencing with Section 50480) is added to Part 2 of Division 31 of the Health and Safety Code, to read: CHAPTER 2.6. The Adult Reentry Grant Program for Persons Experiencing or Likely to Experience Homelessness 50480. For purposes of this article, the following definitions apply: (a) “Adult Reentry Grant Program” means the program created by funding allocated to the Board of State and Community Corrections in Item 5227-110-0001 of Section 2.0 of the Budget Act of 2018 (Chapter 29 of the Statutes of 2018) and all subsequent allocations of funding thereafter to this program. (b) “Chronic homelessness” has the same meaning as “chronically homeless” as defined in Parts 91 and 578 of Title 24 of the Code of Federal Regulations, as those parts read on January 1, 2018, except that the definition also includes people being discharged from an institution who were chronically homeless before entering an institution, regardless of the length of institutional stay. (c) (1) “Community supports” has the same meaning as defined in the California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM) Waiver Special Terms and Conditions Waiver Control No. CA 17.R10. Community supports especially relevant to this program include the following: (A) Housing transition navigation services for services helping an individual access permanent housing. (B) Housing deposits. (C) Housing tenancy and sustaining services after a participant moves into permanent housing. (2) Community supports also includes any other community supports a participant is eligible to receive in the county in which the participant is reentering or living. (d) “Continuum of care” has the same meaning as that term is defined in Section 578.3 of Title 24 of the Code of Federal Regulations. (e) “County” includes a city and county or a city that is working with one or more counties to apply for grant funds. (f) “Department” means the Department of Housing and Community Development, unless otherwise identified. (g) “Fair market rent” means the rent, including the cost of utilities, other than the telephone, as established by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, for units of varying sizes, as determined by the number of bedrooms, that is paid in the market area to rent privately owned, existing, decent, safe, and sanitary rental housing of a modest nature with suitable amenities. (h) “Homelessness” has the same meaning as “homeless” as defined in Section 91.5 of Title 24 of the Code of Federal Regulations, except that a person who is being released from prison who was homeless before their incarceration and who does not have an identified residence upon release is also “homeless,” regardless of their length of stay in prison. (i) “Housing First” has the same meaning as in Section 8255 of the Welfare and Institutions Code. (j) “Interim interventions” means housing that does not qualify as permanent housing as defined under subdivision (m), including, but not limited to, transitional housing, emergency shelters, motel vouchers, tiny homes, or navigation centers, as defined under other federal, state, or local programs, offering services or partnerships with homeless services to connect individuals and families to housing transition navigation services and permanent housing. (k) “Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative” has the same meaning as defined under the amendment to the California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM) Section 1115 Demonstration Waiver, as approved on January 26, 2023, Project Number 11-W-00193/9. (l) “Likely to become homeless upon release” means the individual has a history of experiencing homelessness and the individual satisfies either of the following: (1) The individual has not identified a fixed, regular, and adequate residence to occupy upon release. (2) The individual’s only identified nighttime residence for release includes a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designed to provide temporary living accommodations, or a public or private place not designed for, or not ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings. (m) “Permanent housing” means a structure or set of structures with subsidized or unsubsidized rental housing units subject to applicable landlord-tenant law, without a limit on the length of stay and without a requirement to participate in supportive services as a condition of access to, or continued occupancy of, the housing. Permanent housing includes supportive housing. (n) “Permanent supportive housing” and “supportive housing” mean permanent housing without a limit on the length of stay that is linked to onsite and offsite housing tenancy sustaining services that are easily accessible to tenants and assist participants in retaining the housing, improving the participant’s health status, and maximizing the participant’s ability to live and, when possible, work in the community. Permanent supportive housing includes associated facilities if used to provide services to tenants. (o) “Program” means the Adult Reentry Grant Program, as modified by this act. (p) “Provider” or “subrecipient” means a community-based organization that qualifies as an exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and that contracts with a participating regional administrator, for the purpose of providing housing or services to participants experiencing or at risk of homelessness, with demonstrated fidelity to the Housing First model. (q) “Reasonable rent” means the maximum amount of rent a landlord may charge under the program, taking into consideration the maximum amount of rent landlords may charge when receiving subsidies from the local housing authority. Reasonable rent shall not exceed two times the fair market rent. (r) “Regional administrator” means an entity coordinating funding from existing sources, including, but not limited to, funding under the program, the Justice-Involved Reentry Initiative, community supports, and Medi-Cal Enhanced Care Management, to offer housing subsidies and services following evidence-based models to eligible participants. A regional administrator may be a county agency, community-based organization that is a nonprofit, a homeless continuum of care, or a flexible housing subsidy pool administrator. (s) “Rental subsidies” means a subsidy provided to a permanent housing provider, including a developer that has received government subsidies to build affordable or supportive housing or private market landlord, to assist a tenant to pay the difference between 30 percent of the tenant’s income and fair market rent or reasonable market rent as determined by the grant recipient and approved by the department. (t) “Voluntary services” means services offered in conjunction with housing that are not contingent on participation in services, from which tenants are [Text truncated for display. Full text available on Congress.gov.]